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A RECENT REVIEWS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
- CLICK ON PLAY FOR AUDIENCE REVIEWS FOR THAT
PLAY
- An Evening With Olaf
- Angry Jellow Bubbles
Anything Show
Avalanche
Beatrice And Virgil In Paradise
Benefit Of Doubt
Breton's Dream
Chain Reactions
Chasing Rabbits
Condensed Works Of Frank Cullen
Counting The Ways (A Vaudeville)
Crazy Lady
Devil, Doctor Faustus And …
Disengaged
Don't Tap On The Glass
Double Counterpoint
Dr. Constance Cumming …
First Woman Plural
Floating Bone
From Shit Grows The Roses
Gretl
Happy Endings Are Overrated
Hold Me!
Imbecillus
It Came From Beneath The Kilt!
Jack The Ripper Slept Here …
Kiwi Standup Experience
Male Diva
Ma-Ma-Mamalia
My Penis In And Out Of Trouble
Myth Of Sisyphus
Neo Surrealists
Number 2
Opium
Regular Show
Run Jenny
Seeds Of Longing…
Slam, Bam, Thank You Ma'am
Sole Searching
State Of The Empire Address
Stew!
Ten
That Dorothy Parker
Theatre/Plague
Thicker Than Water
Tim's Magic Lantern Show
Tragical History Of Dr. Faustus
Trailer Trash Tabloid!
Treachery
Withering Glances
Woven
Zewski's Folly
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- 1play = number two
2name = eric
3email = mandiblemex@hotmail.com
4rating = None
5review = this is the play i will reccommend that my friends to come and
see at the best of fringe. it is daring, dangerous, dark, and funny as
hell. these are real clowns, committed, empowered, visionary. more, more,
more!
- 1play = Number 2
2name = goreski
3email =
4rating = 1 Star
5review = Again the Banana, Bag & Bodice folks return to the Fringe
with a production that has little talent and even less skill. Apparently
writing, acting, and direction are beyond these folks, and the hour plods
along slowly with very very few laughs. The acting is just above the level
you'd expect from a High School production... why some folks find this
play enjoyable is beyond me... this is something that could only find an
audience at the Fringe.... anywhere else and it would close the same day
it would open. There's no talent here at all!! Ahhh.... but isn't that
the point of the Fringe thesedays? To gather together folks without talent
or inspiration and then to fool an audience into thinking this is something
akin to "new" theater in some way or another?
- play = Number 2
2name = billy bob
3email = billybob@hotmail.com
4rating = None
5review = WARNING-THIS REVIEW GIVES AWAY PARTS OF THE PLAY. DON'T READ
IT IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE PLAY YET.
When Jessica introduces Number 2 as a fairy tale but makes no claims about
its moral, she puts us, the audience, in the position of both student and
critic. We’re students just like anyone who reads or sees a fairy
tale, receptive to a general moral message beyond the story’s specific
aspects. We’re critics because, even more than not knowing with reasonable
certainty what Number 2’s moral is, we’re told that it might
not even have one. Why a fairy tale without a moral? Why don’t we
know for sure? For the same reason that, at the play’s conclusion,
there is a servant without a master.
Number 2 sets up a contrast between Ned and his master that goes beyond
hierarchy. The master is scientific and explanatory, meditating on the
properties of warm air rising and the biology of his bowels (read cold,
hard facts). Ned has little capacity for his master’s style of reasoning,
and is instead concerned with his promised trip to the seashore (read touchy-feely
experience). He serves his master in the perpetual hope that, if he is
obsequious enough and does all that he’s told, one day his master
will take him to see the ocean. The fact that Ned can’t make it to
the ocean on his own is hammed home over and over.
When the entertainers eventually strangle the master to death, Ned is left
asking, “what do I do now?” to which one of the entertainers
responds, “I don’t know.” The response is at once a renunciation
of the master’s epistemological obsession, as well as an affirmation
of Ned’s new freedom from servitude. The removal of the master has
upset Ned’s usual serve-and-be-rewarded mode; he doesn’t even
know what he wants anymore (if I remember correctly, he doesn’t mention
the trip to the seashore again after his master’s death).
I think it’s important that the entertainers, performing their snapshots
of living, were responsible for the master’s death. Their seemingly
unrelated vignettes appear in contrast to the viscous processes of Ned
and his master, namely Ned’s almost biological cause-effect relationship
with the seashore, and his master’s literally biological relationship
with food and shit. The entertainers left Ned at a loss, but I see that
as the point. Their murder of the master necessarily ejected Ned from the
circle of rationality (means-to-an-end) imposed by his master. The performers
and their art stand against the rational and the epistemological by taking
the spotlight from the payoff and putting it on the present. Ned has had
to turn away from his visions of the seashore and turn towards the life
he is presently living. What he sees confuses him; without the payoff there’s
not so much meaning anymore.
And so I , like Ned, was looking for the payoff, the moral, in this play.
I thought I’d found it. I thought it was: disregard the knowledge
and the payoff; take a look at what you’re really doing right now,
what you’re feeling and experiencing. That’s what I think art,
the performers, can do; they can make the present moment, the cusp of creation,
visceral and palpable, make you feel the violence of actions and images.
It can revivify one’s sense of self-assertion, one’s subjective,
creative ability. Like the performers did for Ned.
But what is one to make of a moral that says there’s no payoff, no
moral. Is there something I missed in this play because I was looking for
the possibly non-existent moral? I don’t think so; I thought I got
a lot out of the performance. It made me sit down and write this review,
after all. In conclusion, I say that the real issue here is not the answer
to the moral/no moral question, rather what the consideration of this question
can create. Thanks to Jessica for prompting us to this consideration.
- 1play = Number 2
2name = Vince Vitale
3email = WorldGazer@aol.com
4rating = 5 Stars
5review = Number 2
Pure Theater of the Absurd. Disgusting master and servile waif servant
child. Their relationship changes when the professional clowns are called
in. When the clowns leave, we are left with a flood of questions about
the meanings of what we have seen. Without these enigmas, I could have
easily passed this absurdist adventure off, but Number 2 has staying power.
- 1play = Number 2
2name = cameron galloway
3email = camiegal@slip.net
4rating = 5 Stars
5review = They were little dark children trying to cope with things just
too terrifying. Even so, I grinned from ear to ear, delighted to see their
spirits come out and play so powerfully and wildly and sadly. Lots of laughter
in the dark. lovely performances seemed not performed at all - more touching
than a "night at the theatre". Daring to be human over being
actors.
- 1play = Number 2
2name = Carl Thelin
3email = carl_eye@hotmail.com
4rating = 5 Stars
5review = Imagine a Beckett play fused with a circus sideshow devised by
Peter Greenaway. That's pretty much what Number 2 is, only it's funnier.
See it
- 1play = Number 2
2name = Tony Castellano
3email = tony_castellano@csaa.com
4rating = 5 Stars
5review = Made me proud to be in the theater, made me proud to be human.
This level of dark Absurdism tells me that people/artist like myself are
out there thinking about the deep dark issues that plague men and the challenge
of existence, living morally, believing/seeking a higher purpose/understanding,
lessons about our relationships to each other, what we need and want, how
we get it, the tools we are equipped with to get what we need, how banal
our needs are, how lost we are--yet good absurdist work is a mirror to
look into with pain to discover where we are where we came from where we
go, why we go, and what we are going to do about it to make it (existence)-
different, more meaningful--- Good absurdism like this play makes me think
-that powerful theater work like this is like our modern equivalent of
the Old Testament (laws to observe horrorfic plagues of spirit and soul
to learn/live by) these character where examples seen, the relationship
and the trap on their littl!
e aburd island and ladder. reminded me of Endgame. it has been said that
writing good absurdism is bery difficult. This group does it very well.
Bravo to philosphical theater of the mad zoo mind of men to pushing us
through this brave work into the next world of understanding. "do
we DEPEND on understanding?"
- 1play = Number 2
2name = brewster
3email = brewster_david@hotmail.com
4rating = 5 Stars
5review = Oops! I reread my review. I meant to say: "it's understandable
to see glitches (in a quickly set up Fringe show), but this one HAD NONE!
BRAVO/A!" I apologize. And I agree with another review...Jason's legs
were surprisingly pathetic.
- 1play = number 2
2name = Denise Dee
3email = unionofopposites@hotmail.com
4rating = 4 Stars
5review = Almost a cautionary tale underneath the humor and the darkness.
It made me want to go out and fulfill my dreams now. I don't know what
moved me more- Jessica's face and voice or the surprising amount of pathos
Jason conveys with his legs. I was sucked in from the first couple lines
of Jessica's narration. I'm sorry our SF treasure now lives in NYC.
- 1play = Number 2
2name = brewster
3email = brewster_david@hotmail.com
4rating = 5 Stars
5review = This was one of the strongest productions I've seen at the Fringe.
Glitches are common, and understandable, but it's nice to see all the elements
pulled off flawlessly. The play goes from strange and absurd to funny,
rollicking, and vulgar. The costumes and props are all very interesting
to observe and study. They have a lot to set up and tear down in 15 minutes.
I loved Jessica's intro and her fancy footwear, Jason's strange bandages
and body-contorted climb down the ladder, and Zuzka and Aaron's wild and
creepy clown act, particularly Aaron's face-down entrance, and Zuzka's
extra appendage. The shower caps are a nice touch. Great to see Zuzka come
alive after spending most of last year's Fringe show suspended silently
from the ceiling. Jason has a monologue that has some interesting lines
and moments, and I get that it's a ramble, but I want it to be shorter,
and the show lags for me there. But when the clowns come on in the middle,
it's non-stop entertain!
ment to the end.
- 1play = Number 2
2name = Christabel
3email =
4rating = 5 Stars
5review = This production was polished and well presented. The actors were
excellent and had mad a great effort to present a piece that was slightly
Kafka-esque in content. This was a fascinating production squeezed into
a short space of time and I was glad to have attended.
- 1play = Number 2
2name = S. Lipschitz
3email =
4rating = None
5review = I really like absurdist theatre. When it's well done, I LOVE
absurdist theatre. I love Number 2. Clever, funny, upsetting, scary, touching:
all the elements I hope for saucily presented.
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